As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
For servicing information handling system components (e.g., storage resources such as hard disk drives and solid-state drives), it is common and allowable for users to remove a chassis cover of a rack or tower server system or pull out a drawer or sled comprising the components while the respective systems are in operation. Removal of the chassis cover or drawer may cause an air channel escape path that prevents adequate cooling of all of the components in the system. If the air channel escape path persists for long enough, some components may reach thermal thresholds and may be shut down to prevent permanent damage from overheating.
In existing implementations of storage drawers, there is a gross determination of the drawer being fully closed or open to any degree. Typically, only a user manual document and/or warning label is available to give the user guidance that an air escape situation can persist for a fixed amount of time (e.g., three minutes or five minutes). Such fixed amount of time represents a worst case scenario of expected failure of a component, but oftentimes such time may be significantly less than an actual failure time of particular components (e.g., some types of storage resources may be less susceptible to overheating in the absence of thermal cooling).
Thus, current approaches are grossly simple in terms of notifying if a drawer is open or closed and thermal algorithms try to react but this is known to be ineffective in airflow escape scenarios for long periods. This rudimentary approach is ineffective in many cases as it relies solely on human care. This threshold level of time is a static number for all worst case components in a system but in reality can vary wildly based on various parameters. For example, when a drawer comprising multiple storage resources is pulled out, a system may grossly indicate that the drawer is open, but in such a scenario, some storage devices may remain inside a chassis when the drawer is not fully extracted (such as when replacing just the outermost rows of storage resources), and accordingly, the storage resources remaining in the chassis may still receive acceptable cooling.